PAX Aus Indie Showcase winners announced

It’s not long to go until PAX Australia once again bursts into our gamer-loving lives with a vengeance, and to make the wait until late October that little bit more bearable, the Indie Showcase winners have been announced.

One of my favourite areas of the show last year, the PAX Aus Indie Showcase (AIS) features six titles as selected by a panel of gaming industry peers from a pool of nearly 100 submissions. There’s a great mix of different styles of games, and visitors to the AIS can be sure to find at least one game to pique their interest. The winners can be found below.

AIRSCAPE: THE FALL OF GRAVITYDeveloped by Cross-ProductCaptured from its undersea home by a mechanical alien race, the player – a ‘Grimpoteuthis abyssicola’ (Dumbo Octopus) must journey through a strange and disorienting environment where gravity follows the contours of the land and blobs of water float suspended in the air. There’s no fighting in Airscape – you’ll have to run, jump, and dodge your way past torpedoes, rockets, lasers, seekers, and more.

ASSAULT ANDROID CACTUSDeveloped by Witch BeamAssault Android Cactus is a manic twin stick shooter with one to four player local co-op, combining arcade style gameplay with masses of enemies, transforming environments and a colourful cast of synthetic heroines. Using a battery timer mechanic in place of lives, Assault Android Cactus is built around high speed gameplay and skillful chaining of enemy kills. Set across five decks of a massive spaceship, robot opponents slash, shoot, launch missiles from their backs, fire screen sweeping lasers and create smaller enemies to attack, while the giant enemy bosses fight with everything they’ve got across multiple phases.

The official website is here. For our interview with Sanatana Mishra, design guru from Witch Beam, click here.

EXPANDDeveloped by Chris Johnson and Chris LarkinExpand is a single player video game in which players explore a circular labyrinth constructed as an abstract black and white geometric landscape. Players must avoid getting squashed as the labyrinth twists, stretches and reveals itself, always responding to the players actions and movements.

GUNSCAPEDeveloped by Blowfish StudiosGunscape provides a toolbox of iconic weapons, monsters and level elements as the foundation for players to build co-op and single-player levels or multiplayer arenas in the most intuitive way possible. It does this by offering a series of easy-to-use tools based on a block-placement interface most gamers are accustomed to. And unlike similar tools currently available on the market, Gunscape aims to empower its authors to enjoy the process of abstract level design by imposing the same kind of refreshing constraints that the still-enduring user map communities of the earliest FPS games such as Doom™ enjoyed; rather than building a game, players build a level within a game that features robust action gameplay and a vast array of weapons, enemies and level components specifically designed to complement one another.

WAVE WAVEDeveloped by Thomas JansonWave Wave is a savage arcade game that challenges players to shift up and down precisely as a sharp wave, desperately dodging a never-ending onslaught of geometric doom. Players are hooked into a blitzing world of constant deaths and instant restarts.

AX Australia will be held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 31 October to 2 November, 2014 and is organised by ReedPOP in conjunction with Penny Arcade. Friday, Sunday, and 3 Day International Tickets are still available and can be purchased only through the PAX Aus website.

Tash is a self-diagnosed gaming fanatic with a doctorate in Psychology. She's also a self-confessed Mass Effect fangirl and will likely talk your ears off if you ever get her started on the subject. A lover of all things RPG and adventure, she has more gamer related action figures and memorabilia than any 20 something year old professional has a right to own, and has spent more time than she’d like to admit to daydreaming about exactly what she would do should the Zombie Apocalypse actually happen.